Why You Need to Ignore Most Current Polling

My eye caught a small item in Roll Call on Tuesday announcing that “Blackwell Leads GOP Senate Hopefuls in Ohio Poll,” a reference to the 2012 Ohio Senate contest.

Polls are news, of course, so this newspaper and its competitors dutifully report them, eager to post a new item on their websites and to make sure that you know they are on top of the latest news.

For pollsters, these types of surveys are a marketing bonanza. Public Policy Polling, a Democratic survey research firm in North Carolina that conducted the Ohio Senate poll that matched former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R) and others against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), is one of the firms that often includes everyone and anyone in hypothetical ballots.

The more names they include, the more likely that some news organization will pick up the release. It doesn’t matter whether the people included in the ballot tests are likely to run.

In March, PPP conducted a survey that pitted Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) against unsuccessful 2010 GOP gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman (R), even though there is no chance that Whitman will make that race.

About a month ago, PPP did a survey about the Arizona Senate race in which the firm conducted a hypothetical ballot test pitting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), who still faces a long and difficult period of recovery after being shot in the head in January, against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who shows no sign of preparing for that race. (Owning a home in the state is not evidence of an approaching candidacy.)

For some colleges, political polling undoubtedly is about marketing. Few had heard of Quinnipiac College (now Quinnipiac University) before the school became a major player in the polling business, and a large New York City public relations firm, Rubenstein Associates, handles the release of the surveys by the university’s Polling Institute. (Rubenstein’s other clients include L’Oreal USA, the New York Yankees and Al Roker Productions.)

I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg, but there is now a growing number of colleges and universities doing polling. Last cycle, the list included Siena, Marist, Muhlenberg, Arizona State, University of Arkansas, Suffolk, the University of Delaware, Southern Illinois, the University of New Hampshire, Manhattanville, High Point, Elon, the University of Cincinnati, Franklin & Marshall, Winthrop, the University of Washington and St. Norbert College.

Of course, some of these schools have extensive experience in survey research and have either experienced political-science faculty and/or veteran political journalists overseeing their surveys and interpreting their data. But almost any survey with a college or university name is going to get picked up by enough media outlets to become part of “the buzz,” even if the institution has no track record in political polling.

I’m not sure whether anyone paid much attention to PPP’s survey showing Blackwell running well ahead of state Treasurer Josh Mandel and former state Sen. Kevin Coughlin for the GOP Senate nomination, but I hope nobody did.

While Mandel was just elected to a statewide office last year, Blackwell has been a public figure in Ohio since he was first appointed that state’s treasurer in 1994.

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March 13, 2015

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., right, hugs Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, after the Congressman spoke at the IAFF's Legislative Conference General Session at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill, March 9, 2015. The day featured addresses by members of Congress and Vice President Joe Biden.